Winthrop University
Wednesday, September 2, 2015
Hurricane Katrina: A decade after the storm
Carolyn Rennix / The Johnsonian Hurricane Katrina survivor Mykesha Wolfe holds a 2006 article from The Beaufort Gazette about her family’s life after the storm.
Winthrop freshman reflects on life 10 years after surviving storm Carolyn Rennix rennixc@mytjnow.com Mykesha Wolfe remembers watching her father take the doors of their hinges and
barricading them against the glass windows in her family townhouse. She remembers watching the trees swaying ferociously outside her mom’s bedroom window as she felt the house shake beneath her feet. She recalls placing towels under the door jams to soaked up the water flooding her childhood home in Algiers, New Orleans. Wolfe, now a Freshman at Winthrop University, was in third grade when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in Aug. 2005. Now 10 years later, Wolfe reflects on how the massive
storm changed her entire world at 8 years old, but eventually led to her success as a teenager. When the initial warnings for the hurricane were on the radio and television, Wolfe’s parents thought it was just another storm rolling through. But like the other thousands of residents the stayed in the city, they quickly realized how serious these warnings had become. “You wouldn’t think something like this would happen in America,” she said. “It was very devastating.”
4see KATRINA pg. 3
Rock Hill, South Carolina
Comedian shocked after crowd leaves midshow Christine Buckley buckleyc@mytjnow.com The seating in Tillman Auditorium was at max capacity for the Preferred Parking Comedy Tour event, with students eager to laugh with disabled comedians D.J. Demers and Samuel Comroe on Aug. 25. Many students were turned away at the entrance of the event, disappointed that they would not be able to enjoy some laughs and experience a new view on disabilities. Some students decided to wait for DSU to compress people within the rows to see how many seats were actually available. Only a few were lucky enough to get a last minute spot. But an hour into the event, almost half of these seats were open after hundreds of freshmen stood up and left the event -- in the middle of the show -- to attend a residence hall floor meeting. “This is the weirdest thing I have ever seen in my entire life,” Comroe joked as people rushed out the auditorium. “It started with five white women leaving and [now] a riot has begun.” According to a student from the audience, if a student doesn’t attend the mandatory floor meeting, he or she could lose their dorm room. Even though approximately 100 students left the show, Comroe used the freshmen leaving to his advantage and made multiple jokes about the occurrence during the remainder of the show. He also posted a video of this wacky event on his YouTube page. Prior to all of the chaos, Demers opened the show by joking about things most of us can relate to; like searching for a movie on Netflix, needing to always have your phone on hand and dealing with the repeating menu while watching a DVD movie. Demers is deaf, something that most people cannot relate to firsthand. But rather than concealing his disability, it has become a component of his comedy sketch. Originally, he did not want to be known as the ‘hearing aid guy.’ He joked that he had decided to incorporate his hearing aids as part of the show for the money; however, in a later interview, he said it was for his fans.
4see COMEDY pg. 9
Editorial: Trump unelectable Editor says Sanders could win, but Trump has no chance Adam Matonic matonica@mytjnow.com
INSIDE
The only thing we have to fear is our fear of Donald Trump itself. Perhaps Franklin Roosevelt would agree. While Trump may play to the fetishes of the far-right, the sheer number of his alienating, offhanded and violent remarks about minority groups renders him unelectable in the general election. Bernie Sanders could satiate voters who are hungry for
straight-talk and relatability, qualities that Trump supporters find praise-worthy. Sanders — provided his campaign can diffuse the stigmas attached to socialism in America (which is a tall order) — may have the potential to appeal to the everyman, grassroots, working class voter in a way that Donald Trump, even at his most entertaining, cannot. The flagrant way in which Trump speaks to the American public has a clear aim, and that aim is to engender a fine-tuned sense of fear and undue paranoia. It was the perpetuation of similar fear-of-neighbor narratives that gave the scare-tactics of McCarthyism so much steam in the 1950s.
4see TRUMP pg. 10
Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press Donald Trump speaks at a National Press Club luncheon in Washington, DC on May 27, 2014.
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